Violence on the Border, Immigration, and the Mission of the Church
The Most Rev. Daniel E. Flores, S.T.D.
Bishop of Brownsville
Mexican American Catholic College
San Antonio, Texas
October 19, 2011
I am particularly grateful for the invitation to speak at this symposium on how
violence is affecting life on the border between Texas and Mexico because the Texas /
Mexican border region is the place in the world where God has given to me the deepest
and most enduring blessings in my life. The river is in my blood, so to speak, and its
past, its present and future cut deeply into my soul. My grandparents were born in
Guerrero Viejo, Tamaulipas, and later moved to Old Zapata, in Texas. When they
moved in those early days of the 20th Century, Old Zapata was just across the river, but
later, after the building of Falcon Dam in the 1950’s, it was just across from Falcon Lake.
My parents were born in the old town, and my sense of Church, of family, and history,
of honor and identity have been and continue to be nourished by roots that go as deep
as the memories of my parents and grandparents, and their memories of their parents
and grandparents. For that is how it was on the border. The late 19th Century struggles
of Mexico in the waning days of the Porfiriato could be the subject of table conversation
and could somehow be made to come alive within my hearing as a child; the trials of
Mexican Franciscans seeking refuge from the persecutions in the early decades of the
20th Century could be made real by an aging relative telling the tale to a young boy.
And stories of American soldiers camped on the river in the days of the revolution
sounded like just yesterday to that 12-year-old.
What I speak about tonight is a matter that flows from a sense of pastoral
urgency as a shepherd on the border. And what I speak about tonight flows also from a
personal urgency, from my interior sense of love for the people who live on both sides
of the great river, and from a sense of stewardship of the cultural richness and depth
that runs as a river of grace through them. From this river of grace I have generously
received.
I propose this evening to discuss the current social and pastoral situation
affecting our families in the Rio Grande Valley. And I will do this by describing some of
the challenges we face on the border due to the criminal violence afflicting northern
Mexico. Many of my descriptions are anecdotal, though there is no lack of lawenforcement records and testimonies to support the particular accounts I will offer. I
will also propose some social and pastoral commentary based upon the reality I
describe. Many of these are based on intuitions and reflections that, it seems to me, are
appropriate for myself and others dedicated to the mission of the Church. I hasten to
1
note at the outset that similar, and indeed, more insightful accounts could be given by
bishops and pastors all along the Rio Grande River.
Listening to the news and reading accounts of the ongoing public discussion of
immigration and border security, I have a sense that we in the Church must do more to
live up to our indispensable obligation to contribute to the discussion in a way that
keeps it realistic and keeps it human. There is no defense of the human person that is
not also a kind of realism. Realism is important because without it we are as a people
trying to address difficulties that are incompletely understood. Keeping it human is
important because we are not dealing only with numbers of people, and statistical
variations. We are dealing with men, women and children, young folks and las abuelitas,
confronting a horrific human tragedy.
At the conclusion of my remarks, I will offer a pastoral perspective, and some
thoughts about the indispensable role of the Church in facing the current reality on the
border.
PART ONE: VIOLENCE AND IMMIGRATION
I.
The increasing complexity of immigration from Mexico
Last Spring, I said Mass at one of our local parish Catholic elementary schools. It
is a good school, with an excellent learning environment. After Mass, the principal
asked me if I could take a few minutes to say hello to a mother with two daughters in
the school. They would appreciate it, she said, because they are going through a
difficult time. So I made my way to the back of the church and found the mother with
her two daughters near the sacristy. The mother explained to me that they were from
near Tampico, Mexico, and that they had recently moved to Texas. Her husband, the
father of the two girls, remained in Mexico working. I suspect he is a professional of
some kind, perhaps an engineer or the owner of a small business. I hear regularly of
families in similar situations, a wife and children relocated to the Valley, and a father
remaining in Mexico to continue working to support the family.
Sadly, though, what the mother and the daughters had to say to me is also
something I hear about regularly. The family had not heard from the husband and
father in three months. He has been kidnapped, and no word has been received as to his
whereabouts. The mother wanted a blessing for her children, and she asked that I keep
their situation in my prayers, especially when I say Mass.
Earlier this fall, I was saying a Sunday Mass at a local parish in the Diocese, and
was happily greeting people after Mass, blessing babies, and saying a few words of
encouragement to the parishioners. A woman, probably in her 40’s introduced me to
her elderly mother and asked if I would bless her mother, and pray for her three
2
brothers. Mis tres hermanos han sido secuestrados, she said. They had been kidnapped, and
no word had been heard from them for several weeks. No son ricos, she added, son
labradores, y no tenemos mucho dinero. Hemos pagado el dinero, pero no hemos oído nada.
These three brothers are not professionals; they are construction laborers in
northern Mexico. The sister and their mother are in the Valley, and are desperately
worried that they will never hear from the three brothers again. Mi mama está enferma,
por favor Monseñor, ruega por ella y mis hermanos. Que Dios nos conceda un milagro. I asked
the Sister to write down the names of her brothers so that I could place them on the
altar in my chapel, and thus remember them at the Mass and in the Divine Office.
And let me tell you of the elderly woman who approached me after the patronal
Mass in one of our rural parishes in Starr County. Amid all the food and music that
happily accompanies las fiestas patronales, she approached me and pulled me by the arm
so she could whisper in my ear. She told me that she was here without documents
because she had no one left in her native town just across the border. Mataron a mi hijo, y
no tengo a nadie. Ruegue por mí, y ruegue por México.
I have been invited into the homes of some of the wealthier Mexican families
living in the Valley. Wealthier segments of the Mexican population have long kept a
second home in parts of the Rio Grande Valley, whether a condominium on South
Padre Island, or a home in one of the gated communities present in our larger cities.
What is different now? They have told me what is different now: increasingly, the entire
family moves to the second home in the United States, abandoning for the foreseeable
future the principal home in Monterrey, Tampico, or Mexico City; por razones de
seguridad. The father in the family will fly into Mexico to attend to business when
necessary, but conducts much of his business via telephone and internet. And more
homes are being built to accommodate the families seeking a less tense, and a more
secure environment.
The dominant fact is that the women and children are here. The men are often
still in Mexico working to support them. They visit when they can. This is a new
phenomenon, and not one that fits into the usual descriptions of immigration that we
hear about on the news. We are accustomed to hearing about the opposite social
dynamic: the mothers and children remain in Mexico, and the men, the teenage boys
and young women come to the United States looking for work so as to send money
home to support them. In the different dynamic that I have described, the families
affected adjust in what way they can. The educated professionals and businessmen can
usually prepare the needed documentation for the appropriate visas or residency, for
their families. The widows and the poor advance across the border by other means.
The new reality is rooted in what each of these families have in common: fear.
They do not live in the Valley, or in Laredo, or in San Antonio primarily for economic
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reasons; rather, fear of kidnapping, random shootings, being caught at the wrong time
in the wrong place, these are the pressures moving them. They are driven also by the
fear that their children will grow up in, and know only, a lawless and cynical
community if they remain at home.
One local law enforcement official put it this way:
We know that people in Mexico live in constant fear, not just for their safety, but for
their lives, the lives of their children, and for their personal property. Their stories
are pure horror. We often listen to them. We listen to them, because they escape to
the United States and to our communities. They come to our communities because
they feel safe here. All of them get here as fast as they can.”1
II.
Realistic perspective
Twice a year, the bishops of Texas with territory on the border meet with bishops
of Mexico whose dioceses also approach the border. One of the realities that we discuss
is the rapidly shifting character of immigration from Mexico into the United States. We
discuss this primarily to keep each other informed of what is affecting our people in
concrete ways, so that we can adapt pastoral strategies in accord with these factors.
What follows in this section are a few observations based upon those meetings and
upon my subsequent reflections on life in the Valley.
In summary, the situation we are facing is much more complex than it was just
five years ago. The conditions driving immigration patterns can be divided roughly into
four general categories. The wealthy, out of fear, are leaving parts of Northern Mexico.
They are establishing their homes and even their businesses in the United States. These
families often nourish hopes of returning home cuando se componga la cosa. That is to say,
when things get better back home.
A second group would include the professionals and businessmen who send
their families to the United States while they themselves remain the bulk of the time
working in Mexico. Here the fear is kidnapping or getting caught in a line of fire.
A third group includes the poorer working class, themselves gainfully employed
in Mexico, but finding it an intolerable situation for their families. Not long ago, while
visiting one of our poorer parishes for Confirmation, the pastor told me that many of
his parishioners tell him of the telephone calls they get from anonymous persons in
Matamoros or Reynosa, demanding ransom for a brother, a cousin, or an uncle whom
they claim they have kidnapped. The family ties between those who are in the Valley
11
Victor Rodriguez, Chief of Police of McAllen, Texas; Testimony before Congress, May 11, 2011.
4
for reasons of fear, and those who have remained home to work make the working poor
particularly vulnerable to petty claims for ransom.
And then there are those who are here primarily looking for work, the
immigrants, we would say, that fit the typical narrative that we hear about when
immigration is discussed in the public square in the United States. Some reports I have
seen seem to indicate that the numbers of immigrants from Mexico approaching the
United States in order to look for work is down, compared to past years, due, some say,
to the weakness of the American economy.
I do not have any statistics or numbers to offer you delineating how many people
are in the Rio Grande Valley for the various reasons I have briefly described. I do know
they are many; they are suffering, and we have to respond generously to the reality they
(and we) are living.
Several years ago the bishops of the United States and Mexico jointly published a
document on immigration entitled Strangers No Longer. In that document the point is
made, one that I think is quite valid today, that people have the right to stay in their
country of origin, and should not have to choose between some stark necessity and
leaving their homeland.2 That stark necessity could be the threat of starvation, or the
inability to support a family in the homeland. The principle holds true when the issue is
violence, and the fear of violence. These families I described to you would quite happily
continue working and raising their children in northern Mexico, were it not for the fear
that pervades life there.
People do not cross the bridges into Mexico so much as they used to. To be sure,
there is still plenty of traffic from Texas into Mexico, and from Mexico into Texas, but
vacationers, or simply Valley residents going across to have dinner or go shopping are
not so frequent anymore. You can see it in the number of fine eating establishments and
stores that have re-located from Matamoros and Reynosa into Brownsville and
McAllen, for example. If people will not go across to eat anymore, then across will come
to where the people are. We should be concerned for the economic impact on Mexico,
though.
You do not have to be an economist or a sociologist to see that there is a relation
between this newer phenomenon of immigration and the more traditional dynamic. Put
simply, we must be concerned about the long term economic impact on Mexico that the
new situations I have described will have. If the entrepreneurs and business men, the
very ones who offer employment opportunities to Mexican citizens in Mexico, are relocating to Texas because of fear, then we can expect an increase of unemployment
among those in Mexico who have never had the intention of coming to the United
2
Strangers No Longer, USCCB, January 22, 2003: no. 59.
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States. There are many Mexican citizens, after all, who think of the United States in
terms of the phrase: Nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there. Yet, if the middle
class and the employer class are leaving because of violence, then we can expect the
effects will be felt in an increase in poverty in Mexico. And this will surely put more
pressure on immigration into the United States, only it will be doubly propelled by fear
of violence and by poverty.
Still, it is important to add reference to another aspect of the violence and its
affect on the immigrant population. This is a matter that should be of great concern to
us all, and is certainly a great concern to the bishops in northern Mexico. We have all
read or seen reports about the massacres of Central American immigrants in San
Fernando, Tamaulipas, and other places. Those murdered in these incidents the poorest
of the poor from Central America, or southern Mexico, passing through the interior of
Mexico on their way to the United States. The deaths in San Fernando shocked the
sensibilities of many, and brought to the attention of both the Mexican and United
States public the kind of organized brutality that frequently occurs in Mexico. As one
Mexican journalist put it: Before it was something that all of us knew, but it wasn’t
publicized.3
I encourage you to read the documentary study done in Mexico by the Comisión
Nacional de Derechos Humanos, (National Commission of Human Rights), entitled Informe
especial sobre secuestro de migrantes en México. 4 Pay particular attention to the personal
testimonies recorded there. Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and others, making
their way through Mexico are routinely kidnapped from trains and buses. They are
forced to give telephone numbers of their relatives in the United States, so that they can
be contacted to pay ransom. The money is used to pay for the drug war, and if no
money is forthcoming, the kidnap victims are killed, and if they are women or girls they
are raped and killed, or if they survive, they are forced to labor for the cartel. It was
likely this scenario that resulted in the deaths in San Fernando, and in many other
places along the route from Central America to the United States. And I know with
surety that kidnapping happens all too frequently on this side of the border.
3
Moises Gomez, reporter for Hora Cero, quoted in an article by Michael Barajas, San Antonio Current, June 8, 2011.
(Gomez is a reporter who, after the San Fernando massacre, traveled to Central America and across Mexico to
trace the path of immigrants on their way to the U.S. border.)
4
Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos: Informe especial sobre secuestro de migrantes en México, 22
Febrero de 2011.
6
PART TWO: THE NEW REALITY IN OUR LOCAL COMMUNITIES
I.
Breakdown of Trust
But, aside from the complex phenomenon of a much diversified immigrant
population, and the tragic phenomenon of cartel violence unleashed on the poor from
Central America and Mexico on their way to the United States, how is this new
situation affecting the life of the people in the Rio Grande Valley?
I remember as a little boy hearing my uncles speak of the work they did en el rancho.
El rancho meant the rough ranch land they owned in Zapata county, and on which they
kept small herds of cattle, and a few horses. Often enough they would mention to us
that some young men had been passing through the ranch, and that they stopped to ask
for directions. This would have been the late 1960’s. Everyone knew that this kind of
encounter involved young men recently arrived from Mexico, probably on their way to
San Antonio and beyond because of an opportunity to work. Les dimos algo de comer,
platicamos un rato, y les llenamos sus botellas de agua para el viaje. Nobody asked for
immigration papers, because in the ethos of life on the border, a markedly Christian
ethos, people did not think of papers when it came to a situation of offering someone a
brief respite in the shade, a time of conversation, something to eat and drink. This is
called hospitality, and it is a basic human good. This basic human impulse is older than
Homer, Virgil and the author of Beowulf. It is a norm of social relations that is prior to
the legal distinction between documented or undocumented. Hospitality given to
strangers, though, is possible only when there is a basic trust between persons, and a
sense that if you are kind to a traveler on one day, someone will be kind to you when
you are on a journey.
It is no longer this way on the border. A barking dog in the yard no longer hints
at the approach of honest travelers. Now, people tense up at the sight of a traveling
stranger. ¿Es un narco?, people ask. Are they carrying drugs? Do they have guns? The
violence has had a corrosive effect on the most basic of human relations. People have
been injured and killed in an effort to be kind. But, I must add, I know people in the
Valley who have acted heroically to help someone half-starved and beaten-up get
medical attention and food.
En México ya no conversamos sobre los acontecimientos del día en el bar o con el barbero.
Porque nunca sabe uno quien está involucrado con las drogas. On the Mexican side, we are
told, it is not safe to talk about the events of the day with someone you do not know or
trust personally. Conversation with the barber or restaurant worker is more limited
than it used to be. And the word on the streets of Brownsville is that it is not safe to
honk your horn at a car that suddenly cuts you off on the road. Nunca sabe uno; si son de
los malvados te matan. People look suspiciously at their neighbors, and at strangers.
People watch what they say, and where they say it.
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It is also true that folks do not trust the press to report what is happening just
across the border. Si al cabo, amenazan a los reporteros. ¿como nos van a decir lo que está
pasando? And reports in the local press on the American side are sketchy and mostly
unconfirmed. We hear about skirmishes on this side of the border, either by rumor or
by press reports. Radio reports come across the air every now and then, usually
beginning with the phrase “unconfirmed reports indicate”. They go on to say that cartel
members fled across the river into the United States, seeking to escape gunfire from
Mexican Federal Police. The last such report I heard, just a couple of weeks ago, said
such an event happened in Starr County.
And so people rely on the whispered account of how many bodies were found in
what town, and word of mouth, spread con mucho cuidado, informs people in the Valley
about what may or may not have happened in the towns on the Mexican side.
Encontraron cincuenta muertos ayer en Valle Hermoso.
No. ¿que estás diciendo? fueron setenta y ocho.
And the American press, cautious to report what cannot, perhaps for security reasons,
be confirmed, alludes in tentative terms to the shadow of violence reaching into our
communities. A general sense of unease creeps into the communities on the American
side, as if everyone knows that whatever is reported is only the surface of a much
deeper abyss of danger and lawlessness.
II.
Law Enforcement
The people of the Rio Grande Valley appreciate and are grateful to all those who
work in law enforcement in our neighborhoods, on our streets and highways, and on
the border itself. These city, county, state and federal officers are our neighbors, attend
our churches and give of themselves heroically for the safety and protection of our
communities.
Me faltan palabras. I cannot tell you how deeply moved I was by the outpouring of grief
and support for the family of slain ICE agent Jaime Zapata. As you may recall, he was a
Brownsville native who was killed in the line of duty in San Luis Potosi earlier this year.
During the funeral procession, school children lined the streets holding little American
flags as the long line of vehicles made their way to the cemetery. The faces of so many
federal, state and local law enforcement officers who formed an honor guard for their
fallen comrade has left a profound impression on me, and I can assure you, on the
residents of the Valley. As recently as last week people have commented to me how
deeply they were affected by Jaime Zapata’s death. There is pride throughout the Rio
Grande Valley that our families have raised, and continue to raise noble sons and
daughters like Jaime Zapata.
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The simple fact is that he died in an effort to put a stop to an aggressive enemy,
an enemy that seems to rejoice in death and destruction. The enemy has many facets to
his countenance. He is the drug trade; he is the insatiable appetite for drug
consumption. He is also the human trafficking trade that makes money off of children
and defenseless adults. He is the deadness of conscience that can kill wantonly and in
cold blood both nameless Salvadoreños passing through Mexico, and uniformed agents,
assisting the Mexican government in the fight. This deadness of conscience then creeps
like a silhouette into our local communities and manifests itself as a sense of fear and
hopelessness marring the thoughts of children and old people, of parents and siblings.
I want to commend Border Patrol for the often heroic work they do in order to
stop the drug trade, and the gangland violence that it spawns and pays for. Delivery of
cocaine is an armed transaction, and many of our federal enforcement agents find
themselves confronting an enemy that will shoot in order to defend his cargo making its
way across the border.5
I have met with the leadership of law enforcement, at various times and on various
levels, and we share a great many common concerns. Foremost among those concerns is
the plague of human trafficking. There are people, right now in the Valley, and in other
communities across the nation, young girls and boys, who are from Central America
and Mexico, kidnapping victims. They are smuggled into the United States and kept
against their will. Some are used as mules to carry drugs from one place to another;
some are used to supply prostitution rings. Local law enforcement often expresses
frustration because it is difficult to identify where people are being held against their
will on the American side.
To my mind this is one of the principal reasons it is important for the various
jurisdictions of law enforcement to remain focused upon their respective competencies.
Little old ladies and their teenage grandsons who live in the Valley without
immigration documents because they are afraid of getting shot in the cross-fire in a
town like Matamoros, are not likely to report suspicious activity in the neighborhood to
local police if they are afraid their immigration status will cause them to be deported
immediately. But we need the help of everyone in the neighborhood to help identify
and apprehend human traffickers, and other criminal elements within the population.
Let the federal agents trained in immigration law enforcement enforce the law in the
manner they think best; but let local law enforcement focus upon maintaining
community order and peace. And as any local law enforcement officer will tell you,
maintaining community peace requires the cooperation of the whole local population,
the very ones who live in fear of the criminal elements operating in the neighborhood.
5
Sigifredo Gonzalez, Jr., Zapata County Sheriff: Testimony before Congress. May 11, 2011. See section “Border
Threats”.
9
And it is only reasonable that Federal law enforcement focus upon these criminal
elements that afflict both recent immigrants and long time residents. There is a
temptation for some to say “arrest all the undocumented, and deport them all.” But the
boat is shipping water, and it is necessary to enlist all hands that are not actively trying
to shoot holes into the boat. And, there is a moral distinction we as a civilized people
should maintain: someone who overstays a tourist visa out of fear for their life is not in
the same category as someone who is running a prostitution ring in the Valley to
support the drug trade. To break the current immigration statutes is not the same as to
be an agent of criminal gangs.
Another common concern is the vulnerability of our youth to the lure of money
that can so easily pull them into the criminal activity that skates both sides of the
border. Police officers and sheriff deputies, as well as ICE agents volunteer time to help
organize youth sports activities, and supervised gathering places for kids. Younger kids
are particularly vulnerable to older kids moving in to intimidate them into joining a
gang or participating in some illegal activity. As the Director of the Texas Department
of Public Safety recently stated publically:
Mexican cartels have corrupted an entire generation of youth living in Northern
Mexico, and they seek to corrupt our youth as well to further their smuggling operation.
The Mexican cartels value Texas teenagers for their ability to serve as expendable labor
in many different roles and they have unlimited resources to recruit our children.” 6
Similarly we share a concern for the corrosive effect of money on the integrity
and honor of all aspects of the local society. I mentioned a little earlier that in northern
Mexico, it is not a good idea to mention in polite conversation at the barber-shop what
you might have heard about the activities of criminal elements. It is sad to say that this
kind of circumspection is growing on the American side. The circumspection is rooted
in suspicion. Because everyone says that drug money moves easily across the border,
many people are not entirely sure who might or might not be tainted by it. My point is
about an atmosphere of distrust. Law enforcement itself knows that they must be
particularly vigilant to maintain the community’s confidence in the integrity of
everyday business and legal relations, and in the local institutions that touch our daily
lives. As one law enforcement officer in Hidalgo County put it in testimony before
Congress:
The threat is drug trafficking money that creeps, infiltrates and corrupts our
communities. The threat is the crime that drug trafficking money causes. The threat is
the criminals that drug trafficking money buys.7
66
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve C. McCraw: As reported in the Brownsville Herald, October 14,
2011.
7
Victor Rodriguez, Chief of Police of McAllen, Texas; Testimony before Congress, May 11, 2011.
10
It is important to recall also that the enforcers of the law do not write the law,
Congress does, and the President signs the law. When it comes to the urgent need to
craft a more just and reasonable immigration law in the United States, our attention
should be focused on Congress and the President. But when it comes to how we work
in our communities, it is in everyone’s interest that all the resources of the community,
including the civil community, law enforcement and the Church marshal their
resources together in an effort to push back the looming darkness that gathers south of
us, and projects its shadows over us.
And this fundamental reality leads me to the concluding part of my reflection.
PART THREE: THE REALISM OF THE CHURCH
I.
Activity in Favor of the Immigrant
It must be the case that the Church, through her public voices including those of
the laity who labor in the field of political activity, is obliged to call attention to the
plight of the innocent who suffer. We must raise a call to conscience for the people of
our two great nations to see how a culture of violence and death is destroying a people
and a culture that has endured and flourished on both sides of the border for many
generations. This destructive blight affects us in different ways on the two sides of the
river, but they are interrelated ways.
Both in the United States and in Mexico, we must put our consciences at the
service of our respective national consciences about these matters. We must insist in
season and out of season that a just people distinguishes between the innocent and the
guilty, and that a great and generous people respond to the plight of the widows and
the orphans, those who mourn the loss of a brother, or a nephew, or a grandson.
Immigrants do have rights and the Church has the ability to help organize ways
in which the newly arrived can learn about their rights, their recourse and their
resources. These grass-roots efforts are a service to justice and charity. And the Church,
imbued with the Spirit, sees the dignity of the human person as a precious mystery that
must be defended; for if we do not defend it, it will be trampled. We all must call upon
our people to see the need to protect the rights of immigrants, and respond generously
to the plight that afflicts them.
And it particularly falls to the whole Church in communion with the bishops in
the United States to insist on a national level that current immigration law is neither
sufficiently humane nor sufficiently realistic, especially in light of the rapidly changing
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dynamics affecting our people and our communities. It is a source of national
embarrassment that state and federal officials cannot reach a comprehensive, cohesive,
humane and realistic approach to the current crisis.
We are living in the United States in the midst of an expansive secularization
which, among its other devastating effects, seeks to relegate to the sidelines of national
discourse any contribution that is offered by a religiously committed people. Leave
your religion at the doorstep of your home, we are told; and I fear we too often do
exactly this. But to accede to this demand is neither true to our identity as Catholics, nor
to the tradition of American political and social discourse. No Catholic seeks to impose
Catholic worship on anyone. But because The Lord said that WE (believers) must love
our neighbor as ourselves, and that this commandment cannot be separated from the
love and loyalty we owe to God, we can never act as if our faith has nothing to do with
the general welfare of our brothers and sisters and the wider community. When we
speak about immigration, the death penalty, adequate health care for the vulnerable
and the elderly, and the dignity of the child in the womb, we are speaking from our
consciences as human beings and as believers. It is a human concern that is made all the
more powerful and impressive upon our conscience by virtue of our faith in the God
made flesh.
In taking active part in the public discourse, we are appealing to the whole
nation to take to heart the plight of those who are without power and influence.
Because we speak of concerns that touch on human dignity, though, our conviction can
resonate in the conscience of the human person, whether a religious believer or not.
This is finely taught in the Second Vatican Council’s document Gaudium et Spes:
Pursuing the saving purpose which is proper to her, the Church does not only
communicate divine life to men but in some way casts the reflected light of that
life over the entire earth, most of all by its healing and elevating impact on the
dignity of the person, by the way in which it strengthens the seams of human
society and imbues the everyday activity of men with a deeper meaning and
importance. Thus through her individual matters and her whole community, the
Church believes she can contribute greatly toward making the family of man and
its history more human. 8
But it would be a grave ecclesiological error, and a Christological error as well, to
say that such political and civil activism is the only or even the most important thing
the Church should be doing at this time.
II.
8
The Gospel Preached and Celebrated
Gaudium et Spes, no. 41.
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It falls to the various levels of government to marshal their resources to protect the
life and property of its people. Communities of peoples are the bearers and promoters
of culture, for good or for ill, and it falls to the Church to provide the resources of grace
to our people that make it possible for them to promote a culture of justice, generosity
and perseverance. The Church has ever understood herself as a leaven in the wider
community of peoples; bearers of conscience, and of hope. This is the deeper call that
the Second Vatican Council called us to hear.9
Despair is the last mask hiding the enemy we are dealing with; it saps the human
and spiritual resources of a people. This is what is rapidly happening in northern
Mexico, and what is also happening in South Texas. Our primary task, then, must be to
open wide the streams of grace that nourish us all, so that we can be equipped with the
strength and courage that only the Lord can give. Only in this way can we be the sign of
hope in the future that is desperately needed in this time of trial. We profess that the
Gospel is the light for the nations, and the hope of every human heart. But, do we act on
this conviction that the Gospel, once accepted into our lives and the lives of our
children, has itself the power to push back the darkness that threatens our
communities? Do we truly act out of our conviction that the grace of faith in the Gospel,
and the grace of the sacraments, when received with preparation and disposition, has a
healing and elevating effect?
The most enduring and effective remedy we offer in this troubled time is to do
what we have always done, only with a greater sense of generosity and urgency. We
need to teach the Gospel, prepare our people for the sacraments, provide for a real
experience of communion with Christ in the Church, and give to all the generations that
follow us a sense of the noble call to be courageous and kind, good and generous and
forgiving.
In the complexity of the current immigration dynamic I described at the outset of
this lecture, I referenced the various ways recent immigrants have been pressured by
reality to move to safer places. I worry that these new arrivals are not easily being
welcomed into our parish churches. Perhaps fear, even on the American side, keeps the
newly arrived from venturing out very often or very far. Perhaps memories of the home
they left leaves them listless and unwilling to make the effort to get to know a new
community. Whatever the reason, we have a heavy obligation to make the new arrivals
welcome in our Churches and at our parish activities.
Historically rooted differences between how we as a Church organize and
structure things can put many new arrivals off, be they rich or poor, and these
differences can make them feel unwelcomed. The attitude that says, “they can come if
they want” is hardly helpful in this situation. All the family situations I described at the
9
Gaudium et Spes speaks particularly of this. See especially no. 10, no. 40, and no. 45.
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outset cause wounds in the newly arrived, and we fail in our Christian charity if we do
not seek out the wounded, and offer them the grace of our communal life as members
of Christ’s body in the United States. As with all that the Church does, we must get to
know the persons whom the Lord puts in our midst, and serve them generously, and
invite them to take part. First of all, we do this, by helping them connect to the source of
grace that is the Lord, and the communion of the Church. Without this connection to
the lived communion of the Church, at Mass, in Religious Education for the children,
and in parish life, the immigrant family or individual, again, rich or poor, remains
vulnerable to the very despair that the violence they fled caused them to experience in
the first place.
And it is with this in mind that I turn to my final reflection.
III.
The Future on the Border
A pastor called me one day last spring just to inform me that he had received a call
from the local police. They wanted to know if he had a student about 13 or 14 years old
by the name of Carlos (not his real name) in his religious education classes. They did
not have a last name. The pastor told them there were at least three by that name
enrolled. The police then went on to say that they had a tip that a boy by the name of
Carlos was being targeted by a local gang precisely because he had decided not to join
that gang. The gang members knew he went to Church there and was going to CCD
classes. The word on the street was, the police added, that this boy would be beat up or
possibly killed. So they were warning the pastor to keep his adults particularly vigilant
to look after the kids before and after CCD, and that they, the police would be
patrolling the area on Wednesday night for some time to come.
Everywhere I go in the Valley, I repeat a message to whoever will hear me that the
ones most at risk are our kids. I plead with parents: spend time with your children. The
cartels, and the gangs associated to them start by offering an 11- or 12-year-old 50 bucks
to take the drugs across to the other side, or to bring something back. If they do well,
they will get more money the next time. They can rise in the ranks and make more
money. We have all known this for some time, and law enforcement has been raising
this concern, especially recently.10 The offer is what we call the “glamour of evil.”
10
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve C. McCraw, ass reporters by Reuters, October 17, 2011: Cartels
would pay kids $50 just for them to move a vehicle from one position to another position, which allows the cartel
to keep it under surveillance to see if law enforcement has it under surveillance," he said."Of course, once you're
hooked up with them, there's consequences."McCraw said 25 minors have been arrested in one Texas border
county alone in the past year for running drugs, acting as lookouts, or doing other work for organized Mexican
drug gangs. The cartels are now fanning out, he said, and have operations in all major Texas cities.This month, "we
made an arrest of a 12-year-old boy who was in a stolen pickup truck with 800 pounds of marijuana," he said. "So
they do recruit our kids."
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Eleven or 12-year-olds are making decisions about whether to make money quick
and easy, or risk being beat up if they choose to live an honest kid’s life and go to
Church, go to religious education classes. The border violence is not simply about
security around the line of demarcation between two sovereign nations; battles are
being fought on the borders of the soul that mark the difference between life and death,
grace and sin. The conscience of an 11-year-old is the principal battle ground in the
current border wars.
I have read a great deal of the French novelist Georges Bernanos, some would
say I have read too much. But with a kind of starkness that defies my ability to describe,
he relentlessly shows how the soul must sooner or later choose Christ or despair, grace
or self-destruction, life or death. My experience in the Valley, I think, has helped me
understand what Bernanos saw in the experience of grace and sin. In the end, either our
lives are held in the hand of a loving God, or there is nothing holding us at all. Al fin y al
cabo, either the story of life is a story meant to end in the triumph of life and goodness,
or it is a story that must tragically end in the destruction of all things. Between Christ
and despair there is no middle ground; there is no safe secular space where we all
happily mind our own business. I bring this up because we in the Church must reengage the urgent necessity of our evangelization efforts, our catechetical and
formational efforts on behalf of our families, our young people, our young adults,
indeed on behalf of the whole world.
If a 12-year-old does not believe that in the end, love and life wins, than the
options open to him or her are fairly obvious. If in the end, death triumphs, then
nothing really matters. Si al fin y al cabo triunfa la muerte, nada importa, y me voy con los que
me ofrecen el dinero, las drogas y las pistolas. There are too many statues of la santa muerte
in our neighborhoods for me naively to think that this evil we face is simply a political
and economic and social problem. The ancient enemy of the human race is drawn by
the smell of death, and he disseminates it. He is not a bystander in the tragedy
unfolding along the river and beyond. He is the ultimate purveyor of this cynical
“nothing really matters anyway” attitude that can infect a young soul or an old one at
any time.
The infection is deadly, unless there is some deeper reservoir of life and hope,
some stronger conviction about what human life is destined for. We have faith; we must
teach the faith. But what do we believe? We believe, as Saint John tells us in his first
letter, “Not that we have loved God, but that he has first loved us, and sent his Son as
the expiation for our sins.” 11 To teach the Gospel, and invite participation in the
mysteries of grace is precisely this, to fortify the soul with its deepest need, namely
faith in the triumph of love over hatred, grace over sin, goodness over evil. Christ is
11
1st john, 4:10.
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risen, death does not win. Even a 6-year-old in our religious education classes knows
this. We hope and pray this young person still knows this when he or she is 12.
It takes both conscience and courage to be good in this world. Conscience is rooted
in the natural law, but the inclination toward the good is both wounded and rudderless
without early, age appropriate guidance and formation in grace. And courage is lacking
if there is no conviction that the victory is possible. The Gospel taught to a 6-year-old,
first communion gently and effectively prepared for, is the beginning of conscience and
courage. Because if you believe that God loves you enough to die for you, and give
himself to you in the Eucharist, then you believe that in the end, the love of God
triumphs over death and sin. In the end, the truth someone teaches a child at age six
may be the only thing that really saves the next generation from the designs of death.
We have to refocus more pastoral resources on the younger youth demographic. If
our youth groups and youth activities are exclusively aimed at high school or college, I
greatly fear we are missing those most at risk. Consult the sacramental statistics of any
diocese in the United States, and you will find some manner of drop-off between the
numbers of first confession / first communions and the numbers of confirmations. It is
a complex question to answer: where did those kids go? But the bottom line is that they
are not so much with the Church anymore. And that is the demographic that is being
offered the 50 bucks to carry the narcotics, or smuggle the guns. It is not an impossible
task to step up our pastoral efforts to connect our middle school-age children to the life
of the Church, but it is an urgent task, and an effort that we need to intensify, given
what is at stake.
And yes, I think poverty has a lot to do with the vulnerability of this age group, but
so does the reality of either a broken home, or two parents who work and are hardly
ever home. And a national immigration policy that separates parents who were not
born here from children who were born here exacerbates the problem intolerably. If
parents are the first teachers of their children about how to tell the difference between
right and wrong, both the Church and the wider society need to be marshalling their
attention toward the support of parents in this vital, irreplaceable work. The Church,
that is to say, we, all of us, need to be actively encouraging parents to spend time with
their children, especially when they are very young. Maybe a second job makes for a
better life economically, but if there is no time to talk to the kids, reflect with them
about what they are seeing at school and in the neighborhood, then the cost of that
second job is too high. Parents have to make those kinds of decisions every day.
The school cannot do this, and the parish cannot do it initially. Our public schools are
increasingly unable to teach about virtue and the good, largely because the working
secular consensus cedes practically all of morality to the private sphere. This disposition
toward leaving large swaths of the moral horizon to private decisions, coupled with
children who increasingly do not have a stable home-life to return to, has led to a moral
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vacuum in the social fabric. How can a 14-year-old hold a gun in the direction of a man
in a car, a man who happens to be the bishop of a diocese in northern Mexico? And it is
not sufficient to say “well, that happens in Mexico.” Do we think that that 14-year-old
does not have a twin somewhere in Pharr, Texas, or in Detroit, Michigan, for that
matter? How can this happen? We might as easily ask when hope in the goodness of life
was driven from him, and then when the conscience lost its voice.
To give the kind of pastoral attention I am talking about, we have to find ways to
coordinate in common the pastoral efforts in parishes on behalf of families, and on
behalf of youth. Sometimes these end up being separate efforts. Particularly when
dealing with the younger demographic, we must be sensitive to the fact that parents are
looking for safe and protected situations for their middle school-age children to develop
a strong social and moral sense, as well as a sense of belonging. Todo el mundo quiere
pertenecer, tomar parte. And if our younger children do not find the right place to belong
in the wider community of the parish, they will easily find themselves invited to belong
to a gang or a cartel. We should be experts in this basic human desire for community,
about having a place, and having something to contribute.
Also, I think we have to do much better at teaching this younger demographic about
the beauty and nobility of a call to goodness and holiness. The lives of Saints can be
powerful in this aspect of youth formation. If someone had not told me about the life of
Maximilian Kolbe when I was starting High School, and handed me a book about him, I
doubt I would be here today. Sometimes I think we adults do not truly appreciate how
an example of generosity and charity impacts the conscience of a young person. Maybe
we get cynical about such things. But the heart of a child is a sacred place, and the early
impressions of the sacredness of life and the goodness of God can have a life-long
impact. I admire the young man, Carlos, and others like him, who have the courage to
go to Mass and religious education classes; he took a risk in saying no to the gang.
Where does such courage come from in a young person? It is from the Lord. Something
powerful got through to him; and he and we are the better for it.
Do we actually know how important it is what we do every day in the Church? Or
do we ourselves give in to a quiet despair that really doubts that in the end it matters
very much? Family time, and soccer games; Sunday Mass and parish festivals,
confirmation classes, and service projects; baseball games and holy hours for peace;
First communions and confession lines; youth rallies, family rosaries, and musical
concerts; a time to be together, and a time to be silent, a time to wash cars, and a time to
clean up the parish grounds; retreats, and charismatic prayer meetings. The list could
go on. What are these things? They are what we do to build up a sense of what it means
to live this life in the confidence that faith gives us in the goodness and beauty of life.
These are the things we do to build up that sense of prayer, community, and service
that make up the essence of what it means to be believers, and to offer light to the next
generation. These are some of the things the Lord does to help us in our times of severe
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trial. The conscience and courage we seek to inculcate in our communities is the leaven
that the Lord gives to his people, through his people. He gives his grace through us,
walking together the pilgrimage of life. To the Lord of life, who gives us these gifts, to
Him be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Thank you for your kind attention.
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